Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712-2 July 1778) was a Franco-Swiss Enlightenment philosopher who was most famous for his works Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract (1762). His works helped to shape the beliefs of the Jacobin Club at the time of the French Revolution, as he advocated the concept of the "general will".

Biography
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Republic of Geneva on 28 June 1712 to a family of Huguenot Protestants. After converting to Catholicism with his lover Francoise-Louise de Warens, Rousseau travelled to Paris to present a mathematical theorem of his, and he became a well-known academic, as well as becoming known as a womanizer (he even abandoned his children, leading to Edmund Burke and Voltaire attacking him ad hominem). In 1754, he returned to Geneva and reverted to Calvinism. In 1755, he completed Discourse on Inequality, the first of his two famous political works. In 1762, he published The Social Contract, and this work and his philosophy of education, Emile, led to both France and Switzerland persecuting him. King Frederick the Great of Prussia gave sanctuary to Rousseau, and he lived in Motiers in the Principality of Neuchatel, which was ruled by Prussia. David Hume later invited Rousseau to England, where he headed in 1766. He proceeded to quarrel with Hume, so he decided to return to France. He became sickly during the 1770s, and he died in Ermenonville, France in 1778 at the age of 66.